Actor Downey Doing Hard Time for an Illness

“This is inmate Downey out at Corcoran state prison,” the caller says. It’s good to hear his name--no relation--and his voice. It is one of two voices you hear from his end, the other being a tape-recorded one that tells you his phone call is being monitored.

Close to three months have passed since a Malibu judge revoked Robert Downey Jr.’s probation and put him behind bars--again. Three weeks ago, the Oscar-nominated actor’s appeal to be released to a L.A. County rehab facility got a thumbs down from the same judge--again.

To those of us who oppose the incarceration of drug addicts, much as we would the locking up of alcoholics, Downey’s three-year sentence seems extreme.

Yet there he languishes behind bars in Kings County, southeast of Fresno, still serving a lot of time for a minor crime, still looking for a way out.

Although represented by heavyweight attorneys in the past, Downey has been unable to persuade Judge Lawrence J. Mira to change his mind. Robert Shapiro handled the Oct. 12 failed appeal. Downey says he is letting Shapiro go, and attorney Robert Waters confirmed on Tuesday that he has now taken the case.

Meantime, there isn’t much to do but do the time.

And maybe make an occasional phone call, reversing the charges.

“To speak to a felon,” jokes the prisoner, with a flair for comedy whether dressed as Charlie Chaplin or in state issue, “please press 1.”

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A typical day at Corcoran begins for the prison population at 7 a.m., when a booming voice calls out: “Chow time, gentlemen!”

There isn’t much to laugh about when you’re in stir, although Downey still does the best he can to see a light side.

“Chow time?” he asks. “What are we having, Purina?”

Everything responsible for bringing one of Hollywood’s really creative artists to this point in his 34-year-old life is understandable in some way. Not excusable . . . understandable. The abuses of substances, a judge’s impatience with the abuse of innumerable second chances, such things explain why a young actor as good as any in Hollywood could be where he is today.

In the budding springtime of 1993, he was in an auditorium, up for Best Actor for a letter-perfect performance in “Chaplin.” Five years later, practically to the day, Downey was watching the Academy Awards on a jailhouse TV, which was turned off by the guards before Jack Nicholson would win this same award for a picture called, not a little ironically, “As Good As It Gets.”

Downey got out of jail a few days later, on April Fools’ Day.

He had been punched by a fellow inmate on Feb. 13 of that year. Four days afterward, he was driven by police squad car to Paramount’s studio lot, with the court’s permission, to briefly complete some film work. On the way back to jail, the squad car carrying Downey was rear-ended by a second squad car.

Such are among the strange adventures of inmates. This is the kind of life they lead, even the ones granted a rare privilege or two.

Now it is nearly the end of 1999, and Downey is still living this life. Except the jail is tougher and the privileges are fewer. His crime? What landed him three years in a California state pen? He was caught in a speeding car, with cocaine and heroin and an unloaded handgun, on June 23, 1996. And here he sits, more than three years later, because his drug habit was so strong that he ducked too many of the mandated treatments.

“I’m meeting all kinds of new and interesting people,” Downey says with a laugh. A number of these inmates are in what is known as therapeutic community, which meets at Corcoran in the afternoons in a group session. He also sees some of these same people in the prison yard, where they play handball and try to talk a little more, as part of their 12-step recovery programs.

And the rest of the time?

“Oh,” Downey says, “I usually just attempt to do some work on my case. You know, DowneyGate.”

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A friend and motivational speaker, Tim Storey, came by to visit Downey a few days ago, just before giving a talk to the Oakland Raiders’ football team.

“He says things like, ‘The bigger the setback, the bigger the comeback. The bigger the test, the bigger the testimony. The bigger the mess, the bigger the message.’ He’s definitely got the rap down. But I get what he means.”

Having harmed no one but himself, though, Robert Downey Jr. has already spent too much time being mistreated for being sick. If alcoholism is an illness, so is his. This is a guy who got sent to prison for not getting well. Let him out.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com